


Devour

by anactoria



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Addiction, Angst, Blood Drinking, Canon Divergence, Dream Sex, Dubious Consent, Episode: s05e14 My Bloody Valentine, M/M, Past Ruby/Sam Winchester
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-11
Updated: 2017-06-11
Packaged: 2018-11-12 22:32:24
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,303
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11171442
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anactoria/pseuds/anactoria
Summary: AU from 5x14 ("My Bloody Valentine"). It isn't just some two-bit demons who find Sam chained up in the motel room, Jonesing for demon blood. It's Lucifer -- and he's here with an offer Sam can't refuse.





	Devour

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for Round 9 (colours) of the [SPN Rare Ship Creations Challenge](http://rareshipcreationschallenge.tumblr.com), for the prompt 'Big Drop o' Ruby'.
> 
> Thanks to [millygal](http://archiveofourown.org/users/millygal/pseuds/millygal) and [Amberdreams](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Amberdreams) for all their beta help! You're both awesome. <33

Sam isn’t going to last much longer.

He’s sweating, heat prickling behind his eyes, handcuffs biting into his wrists. Getting comfy on the bathroom tiles would be an impossible task even without Famine tugging at his mind, but right now he wants to crawl out of his skin. Except that the thirst would probably follow him even then.

Blood. It’s all he can think about.

He even misses the parts that used to disgust him. How the coppery taste of it used to cling in the back of his throat. The thick texture. How quickly it used to turn lukewarm. Now, he’s pretty sure he’d be grateful just for the coagulated dregs from the bottom of his flask, swirled around with a slug of bourbon so that he could swallow them. He used to get desperate enough to do that, sometimes.

It isn’t like he hasn’t been tempted, since Ruby. But it hasn’t been the old urgent, full-body craving. Whatever cleaned him up after it plucked them out of St Mary’s, it did a thorough job. Plus, there’s what memory does to feelings, the way they get mixed-up and dulled in the telling, and Sam’s been telling himself _I’m fine_ a whole lot these past few months. Right now, though, the need is back full force, like being hit by a freight train except that it never stops.

Of course he isn’t fine. And if Dean and Cas don’t take out Famine pretty damn fast, he isn’t going to be anytime soon.

Naturally, the moment Sam has that thought is the moment he hears the bookcase Cas used to jam the door shut being shifted aside.

Through the haze in his head, he blinks at the door. “Guys?” His voice comes out sounding ragged. “Guys, what happened? I don’t think it worked. I think I’m still—”

The door opens, then, and he trails off. It isn’t Dean and Cas. It’s a man and woman he doesn’t know. And their eyes are black, and the thirst keeps right on clawing its way up his throat.

“Look at this.” The demon in front smirks down at him. “Someone trussed you up for us. Boss says we can’t kill you, but I bet we can break off a few pieces.”

“You bet, you lose.” The voice comes from behind her, but it isn’t the other demon—he’s looking back over his shoulder, stuffing his cellphone into his pocket. 

Dimly, somewhere beneath the heat and the thirst, Sam registers that the voice is familiar. It’s quiet, gentle, but the first demon looks like she’s shitting bricks.

“I, uh.” She gulps. “I was just kidding around. Didn’t realise you’d be overseeing the extraction personally.”

When Lucifer appears in the doorway, he’s smiling. 

He claps the second demon on the shoulder. “You both did well. You got the word back to me right away, and _you_ —” He turns back to the first demon. “—thought to check this place out. That was smart.”

The first demon nods frantically. Sam knows he should be freaking out, should try to extricate himself from the cuffs and run, but he finds himself distracted by the movement of her throat, the way the vein in her neck throbs. 

“Thank you?” she says.

Lucifer cocks his head. “Threatening Sam, though? That was less smart.” A barely-perceptible movement of his hand, and light flickers beneath the demon’s skin. The black goes out of her eyes, her meatsuit collapsing lifelessly to the ground.

The second demon wets his lips, glancing toward the door like he doesn’t know whether it’s better to freeze or run.

“You should leave,” Lucifer tells him, his voice still mild. The demon doesn’t wait to be told twice.

And then they’re alone. Sam, shaky with bloodthirst, sweat in his eyes and a red fog in his head, and Lucifer, looking down at him with open curiosity.

It’s the first time they’ve come face to face since Carthage. Then, Sam promised to kill Lucifer himself. He was raw with grief and anger and the latest blow to his hopes, and if Cas hadn’t shown in the nick of time, he thinks he might just have tried it with his bare hands. Right now, the best he can do is try to keep breathing, feet scrabbling backward on the bathroom tiles as Lucifer crouches in front of him. Not that Sam has anywhere to go.

Back in Carthage, Lucifer smiled in the face of his rage and told him they were the same. He looked sincere when he said it, and that just made Sam want to put his hands over his ears and shut his eyes tight. He has the same look on his face now, as he reaches out and presses a cool hand to Sam’s forehead.

Sam grits his teeth, but he can’t help feeling it through the feverish heat of the withdrawal. He wishes it wasn’t a relief.

“Sam.” Lucifer says his name very gently. “Look at me.”

Sam scowls at him. “Why would I do anything you say?” His voice only shakes a little.

“You still don’t trust me.” He has the gall to look genuinely disappointed, and for half a second, Sam’s outrage overrides the pounding in his head and the heat beneath his skin.

“You sent those demons to find me,” he points out. “You don’t get credit for stopping them.” 

Lucifer shrugs. “I guess that’s fair.”

Sam blinks the sweat out of his eyes and squints at him. “So what are you doing here?” He ought to be more afraid, he thinks. Maybe it’s just that he has no room left for fear, the hot thirst expanding until it fills up his whole being, until there’s nothing else of him left. “It’s not like I’m going to say ‘yes’ to you just because you called them off.” He ducks out from under Lucifer’s hand, hitting the back of his head on the underside of the sink, and realizes that, despite himself, he’s been leaning into the touch.

It’s just Famine, Sam tells himself. He’s just desperate for anything that isn’t the raging thirst.

Lucifer doesn’t laugh at him when he hits his head. “I know,” he says, instead. “But you are suffering. And I can make it stop.”

Sam scowls—or hopes he does, anyway. It feels more like a grimace of pain. “So that’s your play? You call off Famine if I say _yes_ to you? Thanks, but no thanks.”

Lucifer lifts an eyebrow. “Call off Famine? Sorry, Sam. I can wind the Horsemen up and watch them go, but they’re not exactly precision weapons. I don’t get to micromanage.”

“What, then?”

Lucifer watches him a second longer, like he’s waiting to see if Sam will figure it out. Then he gives a small sigh, and the gleaming point of an angel blade drops from his shirtsleeve.

Sam knows—he thinks—that Lucifer won’t kill him, but he still flinches, his rabbit-fast heartbeat stuttering for a second. Lucifer doesn’t make any sudden moves, though, just raises the blade. Then he holds up his other hand and draws the edge across his palm without blinking.

The smell of blood hits the air, a warm sudden tang that Sam can feel on the back of his tongue when he inhales. Living, straight from the source: it always felt best that way. 

He blinks hard at the thought, tries to push it back, but it’s too late: he’s already seeing her, in his head, behind his eyes. Ruby, a smirk on her face as she took his hand and tugged him toward the bed, shrugging out of her clothes. The thin line of blood beading at the edges of the cut when she sliced into her pale thigh. 

Sometimes, especially at first, he tried to resist. But in the end, he always went where she pulled him, throat dry with thirst, dick twitching in his jeans. It made him dizzy, the dark, heady smell of whatever power was in the demon blood—and the anticipation, knowing how it would feel as it swirled through him, as he reached out and caught demons in the threads of his mind, twisted them away from their meatsuits and wrung the life out of their souls.

But this—this isn’t exactly the same. There’s something bright and cold beneath the metallic smell of blood. Something he feels like a fizz of static in his head, a snowflake on his tongue.

Sam blinks, and the scene in front of him swims back into focus. It isn’t Ruby holding the knife. She’s long gone, and—

And Lucifer is still crouching in front of him, still watching him with that terrifying patience. 

That’s what it is, the bright cold thing. It’s the same smell that lingers in the room for a second after Cas flies in, only stronger. Because of the blood, maybe; or because Lucifer isn’t just a regular angel.

Angel blood. Sam wonders why he never thought about it before. He realizes that he’s leaning toward it, toward Lucifer, his wrists straining against the cuffs.

Then he catches himself, through the heat and the thirst.

“I was dumb enough to fall for that once. You’re not gonna get me a second time.” He’s aiming for defiant, but his voice comes out hoarse, and when he blinks it’s like it’s snowing behind his eyelids.

“This isn’t a trick, Sam.” Lucifer’s voice is steady. “No strings attached. You need help, and I can give it. That’s all.”

“Getting me hooked again, like Ruby did? That’s all?”

“You misunderstand me.” Lucifer sits back on his heels a little, closing his hand and pulling it in toward his body. The smell of blood dissipates a little, and Sam feels his head clear. Not that that really helps, just makes the fever and the pounding headache reassert themselves. “This isn’t the same thing. Demon blood—that’s street-corner crack compared to what I’m offering you. No hangover, no comedown, nothing corrupting you.”

“Nothing except _you_.” But God, just the thought of it goes to Sam’s head, and he feels suddenly unsteady, scrabbling at the pipes with his cuffed hands as though that’s gonna stop his head from spinning.

With his free hand, Lucifer reaches out and clasps his shoulder. Sam knows he should shake it off, but it helps a little, the small point of contact giving him something to ground himself against.

“You’re wrong,” Lucifer tells him, then. “Demons are corrupted human souls.” He makes a small moue of distaste. “Of course they pass on the disease. Angels are different. We’re a separate species. Pure.” There’s an undertone in his voice, something Sam can’t identify, not that he’s really in any state to try. “I couldn’t corrupt you if I wanted to, and I don’t.”

Sam swallows hard against his thirst. “And all I have to do is take your word for it.”

Lucifer shrugs. “My word’s all I can offer you. It’s good.” He lets his hand drop from Sam’s shoulder, then, and gets to his feet, wiping his palms off on his jeans. The left one leaves behind a small smear of blood, and Sam’s eyes fasten on it irresistibly. “But if you’d rather take your chances waiting for Dean and Castiel to fix this one, I can’t stop you.” Lucifer glances toward the door into the bedroom. “You want a cushion? You might be here a while.”

“Wait.” Sam’s own voice startles him, catching painfully in his throat.

Lucifer stills in the doorway. Shame catches up with the surprise, then, creeping up Sam’s throat to silence him. He looks away. 

There’s a moment of silence, then footsteps on the tiles, and Lucifer is back on his level. This time, he sits cross-legged opposite Sam on the floor, hands clasped in front of him. Sam can’t see his palms, but he can still smell a faint tinge of blood.

“What is it, Sam?”

Sam blinks hard, not meeting Lucifer’s eyes. “What do you mean, I’ll be here a while?” he gets out. “Dean and Cas—are they—?” He can’t finish his sentence.

Lucifer raises his eyes and looks, for a moment, like he’s listening to something Sam can’t hear. “Castiel—huh. Apparently he’s on the floor stuffing his face with raw hamburger meat.” He grimaces. “And your brother’s gotten himself made. Not surprising, really, storming in like that.”

Sam’s heart sinks. But a traitorous little spark of hope ignites itself in the back of his mind, and he finds himself asking, “Does it work the same way?” He swallows, wets his lips. “I mean—the powers?” Famine can’t be called off, Lucifer says. But he has demons doing most of his dirty work. If Sam can just get them out of the way, then maybe that will even the odds.

Lucifer tilts his head; almost the same gesture Cas uses when he’s thinking. “You could exorcize demons, sure. Kill them, even.”

All the power, none of the cost. 

It sounds too good to be true.

But Dean and Cas are in trouble, and the smell of blood is making Sam’s head spin and his mouth water, and Lucifer is still sitting in front of him, so terribly patient.

At last, Sam looks up and meets the Devil’s eyes. They’re cool, wintry blue, piercing right through the fever, and he can’t help his shudder of relief. 

“Get me out of these cuffs,” he says.

A wave of Lucifer’s hand, and he’s free.

There’s a brief moment where Sam knows he could still change his mind. He never stopped feeling it, that heartbeat flash of doubt, even when he was in the thick of it with Ruby. Then he thinks of Dean and Cas and Famine—and the rush of power in his veins, the satisfaction of tearing a demon from its meatsuit—and he reaches out and takes Lucifer’s hand in both his own, and presses his mouth to the palm.

Lucifer doesn’t reach out for him, doesn’t try to take control, just lets him do it. Sam feels a brief flash of surprise at that.

Then there’s blood on his tongue, and for a long moment he doesn’t feel much of anything else. The feeling seizes him like gravity and when he closes his eyes he’s freefalling. 

There’s cosmic snow inside his head, lightning crackling along his nerves. He is so much bigger than his body, than this room or this building or the earth that it stands on, bigger than sight or sound or touch. Things he can’t place scratch at the edges of his consciousness, appealing to senses he didn’t know that he had until now. The ones he does know about, too. Shivery tingles run down his body, setting off little sparks of sensation. It feels a little like starlight might feel, if you could touch it, only it’s warm and living at the same time, running down his spine and his sides and straight to the base of his cock. Solar systems swirl inside his skull. He breathes out supernovas.

He drifts there for moments that feel like hours. Or maybe it’s the other way around, time telescoping out and stretching him along with it.

“Sam.”

The voice reaches his ears indistinctly, distorted by the wind between the stars. It tugs at him gently, draws him back down to earth.

He blinks, and the room comes back into focus. He’s still sitting on the bathroom floor, legs splayed out in front of him, breathing like he’s just run a mile. There’s a coppery taste on the back of his tongue, a cool bright ache in his belly that reaches to the tips of his fingers. Oh, and he’s hard as a rock.

Sam scrambles to pull his shirt down, a hot flush of embarrassment creeping up his neck. Not the fever from before, though. That’s gone, and so is the thirst.

He half expects a taunt about the inappropriate hard-on, a raised eyebrow at the very least, but they don’t materialize. Lucifer stays where he is, kneeling in front of Sam, eyes intent on his face. One of his shirtsleeves is rolled up, and there’s a precise cut down the inside of his wrist. Sam doesn’t remember doing that, or watching Lucifer do it.

Before his eyes, the skin knits itself back together, the cut disappearing like it was never there. He wonders, distantly, how come Lucifer can heal himself like that, but not the burn marks on his face? They’re still there, just as dark and angry-looking as they were back in Carthage.

The answer makes itself obvious right away. Because knives only wound the flesh. The sheer power of an archangel is something different than that, and now Sam’s gotten a glimpse of what it’s like. To be light—so much light—a galaxy folded up small and stuffed into a human skin, existing on a dozen planes at one—

“Is that how it always feels?” The question comes out before he can think to stop it, a ragged gasp. Sam isn’t even really sure what he’s asking. _Is that always how it feels to drink angel’s blood? Is that always how it feels to be you?_

Either way, Lucifer doesn’t answer, just gives him an opaque little smile. “Don’t you have a job to do?”

Dean. Cas. The town. 

Sam’s heart thuds as awareness of his situation slams back into him, and he scrambles to his feet, steadying himself on the bathroom wall. He doesn’t know what Lucifer’s game is here, giving him the tools to take out Famine, or even if it’s going to work, but he doesn’t have time to worry about any of that stuff right now. Actually, he _feels_ like it’s gonna work. He isn’t spiralling through the stars anymore, and his legs feel a little shaky, but there’s a thrum of power in his veins, and his head is clear. 

As he straightens, though, Lucifer stops him. He’s on his feet, too, now, and he’s up in Sam’s space. Too close, and for a moment Sam thinks, insanely, that Lucifer is about to kiss him.

Instead, he leans in and cups Sam’s cheek. The cool pad of his thumb brushes Sam’s bottom lip, wiping away a droplet of blood. 

Sam can’t help but chase the movement—just for a second, before shame kicks in and makes him jerk away.

Lucifer shrugs. Then he puts his thumb to his mouth and licks the drop of blood away, almost absently. 

“You don’t have to deny yourself, Sam,” he says, softly. “You’ll realise that soon enough.”

A sound of wings, and Sam is alone in the bathroom.

He flees.

 

\----

 

He goes to the panic room at Bobby’s willingly enough, Dean and Cas having taken one look at the blood around his mouth and jumped to the obvious conclusion. Better to let them assume Famine had gotten the better of him and he’d drained a demon than to explain how much worse things really were.

The door clangs shut behind Dean as he leaves—headed, Sam’s pretty sure, straight for the bottom of a bottle. Whatever Famine said to him back there in the diner has gotten to him, and Sam walking in juiced-up and bloodied had apparently been the final straw. 

Sam will feel guilty about that, later. Right now he mostly feels… weirdly okay. Killing Famine hasn’t left him feeling drained, hasn’t given him a nosebleed or a migraine, the way it would have when he was drinking demon blood. 

It’s just that when he blinks, he sees light exploding behind his eyes; just that when he concentrates, he can still feel it. The starry fizz in his nerves, the faint twitch of arousal at his groin, and all those other things he knows he might have been able to feel, if only he had more than his five little human senses.

And Lucifer. The way he watched Sam’s face, all that patient certainty. The cool touch of his hand. How gently he said, _You don’t have to deny yourself._

Sam grits his teeth and tries not to think about it. But the panic room is dark and quiet, and that was probably for the best when he was howling his way through withdrawal, but right now it makes thinking way too easy. There’s nothing here but the sound of the overhead fan and the shadow of the devil’s trap cutting across his torso, turning him into a patchwork of light and dark.

He sleeps, uneasily. He dreams of light and space and wintry blue eyes, and when he wakes he can still feel the power inside of him. Light in his veins, need sparking in his nerve-endings, the desperation to reach out and touch something. He’s hard again, and he grits his teeth and tries to will it away.

It’s an automatic reaction. He used to feel this way with Ruby, too; he never would have started sleeping with her otherwise. The fact that this time, it’s accompanied by the memory of Lucifer’s voice, his cool touch, the intent way he’s looked at Sam each time they’ve met—well, that’s just circumstance. 

“Is it?”

For a moment, Sam’s convinced that the voice is inside his head. He must be imagining it. Or hallucinating.

“I told you you didn’t have to keep denying yourself, Sam.” A shadow that isn’t from the devil’s trap crosses his field of vision—and Lucifer is standing over him. He looks different than he did earlier, the burn marks gone from his face. The same image of himself he beamed into Sam’s dream that first night, back in Garber. “And telling yourself this means nothing? Looks a lot like denial from where I’m standing.”

Sam swallows hard. “I’m dreaming.” His right hand jerks in the restraints with the instinctive urge to reach down and trace over his ribcage—as though he could check Cas’s warding by touching it. “You can’t be here.”

Lucifer nods agreement. “I can’t see where you are,” he says mildly. “But I can see _you_.” 

He crouches, putting himself closer to Sam’s eye level—close enough that, once again, Sam finds himself tensing up with something between fear and anticipation.

Lucifer doesn’t try anything, though: just keeps talking. “I know you felt it. The connection.”

Was that what it was? The feeling of being part of the stars; the wonder he’d felt after he came back down? Sam opens his mouth to say something, but he doesn’t know what, and he ends up just staring dumbly at Lucifer.

“It’s alright,” Lucifer tells him. “You don’t have to say anything.” He’s touching Sam’s face again, then, thumb brushing gently along his cheekbone, and Sam finds himself leaning into the touch on instinct before he can stop himself, his heartbeat speeding up with the anticipation of—something.

Maybe Lucifer hears it, because he smiles, faint and knowing. And then, at last, he does lean in and press their lips together.

It isn’t tentative—Sam can’t imagine Lucifer is ever uncertain in anything he does—but it is gentle. Not a demand.

But with it comes the ghost of the feeling from earlier, a shudder of sensation that brings his fading arousal back to life, a whisper of starlight—like watching a comet pass above him in the dark, and at the same time feeling its breath against the shell of his ear. Sam can’t help but go with it, his eyes sliding closed, his lips parting to slowly, falteringly kiss back.

It's just the blood. That’s what he’ll tell himself later. It’s just the blood, and anyway, this isn’t real.

It feels real, though—realer than anything has in months, if he’s honest with himself. The Apocalypse, everything that he’s set in motion—some part of Sam’s brain keeps on insisting it has to be a bad dream, because otherwise it’s too big and awful to comprehend. In the cold light of day, Sam keeps his head down and insists that they can still fix it, that they can still find a way, because he might just shut down completely if he didn’t keep believing it.

But this—the slow slide of lips against each other in the dark, the memory of being a galaxy—Sam couldn’t hide from it if he tried, and he’s damn tired of trying. So he goes with it, lets it sweep him up and carry him along.

When Lucifer finally breaks the kiss, he finds himself making a strangled noise of protest in the back of his throat, sitting up as best he can while he’s still strapped to the bunk.

“It’s alright,” Lucifer tells him, again, his breath whispering against Sam’s lips. Hearing that from the Devil should be the least reassuring in the world, but somehow it isn’t. Sam breathes out, sinking back down onto the bunk as Lucifer tells him, “I’m not going anywhere. _I_ will never do that to you.”

It’s vehement, an undercurrent of something like anger in it, but when Sam opens his eyes, Lucifer’s expression is still mild and gentle.

Sam starts, then, at the feeling of fingers on his skin, Lucifer’s free hand creeping up under the hem of his shirt. The sensation makes him shiver, and Lucifer’s hand stills against his belly.

“Tell me to stop, if you want,” he says.

Sam should. He should shake off the dream and force himself back to reality, and never ever think of it again. He could recite the reasons why like the alphabet. Lucifer’s not a person; he’s nothing Sam can ever comprehend, and whatever connection he claims is between them is an illusion. Ellen and Jo are dead because of him, and so are God knows how many other innocent people. Sam’s life is in tatters because of him: Ruby, the demon blood, the fights with Dean, all of it. He took one step too many down the road to Hell when he took Lucifer up on his offer earlier, and he shouldn’t even be thinking about taking another.

Only, he saved Dean and Cas, didn’t he? He took down Famine. Lucifer was willing to let him do that, even though it must have thrown a wrench in the works of his big plan.

The stars swim before him when he blinks. He still feels dizzy and desperate, and the thought of being touched makes his breath catch in his throat.

“Sam?” Lucifer’s voice is still soft, his gaze still level and sympathetic.

He swallows hard. “No,” he says. “No, don’t stop.”

 

\----

 

Lucifer’s deft, clever with his hands. Sam thinks, vaguely, that he might have expected that, if he’d ever thought about it. Back in Carthage, surely Lucifer could’ve gotten a few demons to dig the graves, if he’d wanted, but he’d done it himself. He’s not interested in keeping his hands clean. 

Now, he makes short work of the buttons of Sam’s shirt, pushing it out of the way and tugging down the neck of Sam’s t-shirt to mouth at his collarbone, cool, tingling kisses that Sam wants _more_ of, only the restraints stop him from getting it. He wants his hands free, wants to shrug out of his clothes and bury his fingers in the spiky mess of Lucifer’s hair. Hell, he wants to press his hands to Lucifer’s skin, to find out if he can make Lucifer feel something, anything, like Sam is feeling now. This isn’t enough, and he strains against the restraints, making a bitten-off noise of frustration in the back of his throat.

Hearing it, Lucifer raises his head and kisses Sam softly on the mouth again. “What’s wrong?” he asks.

It takes Sam a couple seconds to find his voice. “Kinda—kinda awkward here, don’t you think?” He tugs on the restraints. “Think you could do something about this?”

Lucifer nods, and gives a wave of his hand.

Nothing happens.

“What—?” Sam frowns, thinking for a moment that it’s a cruel joke, but Lucifer looks a little puzzled himself. 

He repeats the gesture. Still nothing. “Huh,” he says.

“ _What_?”

“This is your dream, Sam. There’s only so much I can do to affect it.” Gently, Lucifer tugs on the strap holding Sam’s right arm, but it doesn’t budge. “Looks like your subconscious is putting its foot down.”

“I don’t—no, that’s not what I want—”

Lucifer’s expression is all sympathy. “Think that might be the point.” He dips his head, pressing his lips to the side of Sam’s neck, the touch as light as a breath. “But don’t worry. I’ll take care of you.” He looks up at Sam, questioning. “If you’ll let me?”

It goes against every instinct Sam has—not just trusting Lucifer, but letting somebody else take the reins here. He’s used to being able to pick up the women he hooks up with, hold them up against the wall when they fuck, and his partners are usually pretty damn happy about it. It’s about the one time he ever does feel in control, and giving it up—well, he’s never even given it a moment’s thought.

But he doesn’t seem to have a choice here. Hell, his own mind isn’t giving him a choice, and as Lucifer goes back to what he was doing, nibbling along the line of Sam’s collarbone, Sam decides that, for now, he’ll go with it.

After all, it’s only a dream.

He isn’t used to things being this gentle. Lucifer takes his time, kissing his way down Sam’s torso, pausing to run his tongue over a nipple, to trail his fingers down Sam’s sides so lightly that it tickles and makes him squirm and muffle a curse. 

At that, Lucifer looks up and smiles at him. It looks bright, genuine, amusement crinkling his eyelids up at the corners, and for a moment he looks like a _person_. The thought makes Sam’s heartbeat quicken, but he pushes it away, and instead he shakes his head and grumbles, “Quit it, that tickles.”

Lucifer raises an eyebrow. “Whatever you want,” he says, simply, and sinks down further, nosing at Sam’s belly, hands coming to rest on Sam’s hips. His breath whispers across the skin, and Sam’s breath catches in his throat, only this time it definitely isn’t because he’s ticklish. His cock strains against his jeans, and he can’t even muster a moment’s hesitation when Lucifer begins to work open the buttons.

It seems like an eternity until he’s free, jeans and boxers shoved down around his knees. Lucifer gives a pleased hum, and Sam manages to break out of the fog of relief and frustration enough to ask, “What?”

Lucifer meets his eyes. “You’re beautiful,” he says—simply, like he’s just observing that the sky is blue. “All of you. I knew you would be.”

Sam can’t help the flush of embarrassment that creeps up his body, right to the tips of his ears. It’s something different than the sense of wrongness he’s been pushing down since the motel, not really much to do with the angel blood or the unasked-for arousal he’s feeling, and he can’t stand to start taking it apart now. If he thinks about it too hard, this whole thing is gonna come tumbling down around him. “Don’t,” he says, and this time it isn’t so much a grumble as a plea.

“Okay.” Lucifer’s voice is mild, and he pats Sam’s thigh, all gentle reassurance. 

Then he reaches up and takes Sam’s cock in his hand, stroking him firmly from root to tip.

His touch isn’t cool, like Sam was half expecting. It’s warm and living and real, and the relief of finally being touched is enough that all Sam can do is let his head fall back against the cot and go with it. All the breath escapes his lungs, and his sigh turns into a groan as Lucifer keeps up his rhythm, slow and lazy. 

He lets himself feel it, the gradual build of need, the heat creeping over the surface of his skin. He tries to relax into it, but it isn’t enough for long. It’s too slow, a relentless tease. Maybe Lucifer doesn’t realize—after all, he isn’t exactly a fan of humans. Maybe he hasn’t done much of this kind of thing before.

But when Sam blinks his eyes open and looks down, the corner of Lucifer’s mouth is curled up in a faint smile, and his eyes are intent on Sam’s face. Yeah, he knows what he’s doing.

“Sam?” he asks, his hand going still, eyes all wide and innocent. “Is something wrong?”

Sam bites back a groan of frustration. “You know,” he says. “You know. Please. Don’t—”

He doesn’t really know how he intends to finish his sentence. _Don’t stop_ , or _don’t carry on_ , or _don’t make me say it out loud_. Either way, Lucifer pulls himself back up onto the cot, kisses him deeply, looks into his eyes.

“I will never deny you,” he says, very seriously. “You don’t need to be afraid of that. Not with me.”

Sam doesn’t know whether he should be grateful or terrified, and then he can’t manage to think about it at all, because Lucifer sinks back down between his thighs and swallows his cock down in a single movement. 

Sam shudders, his hands grasping at nothing. All he can do, for a long moment, is close his eyes and let himself drown in it, the wet heat of Lucifer’s mouth, the way he grips Sam’s hips, just this side of painful.

It probably shouldn’t be a surprise that the Devil knows his way around a blowjob—but it kind of is. Lucifer’s always seemed so remote, like he’s looking down on humanity from up on some self-built pedestal, and Sam would’ve figured, if he’d thought about it at all, that he’d consider sex beneath his dignity. But he sucks Sam’s cock with absolute focus, taking him in deep, giving an experimental swirl of his tongue and then doing it again and again when it makes Sam curse under his breath and pull against his restraints. He isn’t just watching Sam’s face anymore: his eyes are closed, like he’s concentrating hard, and it occurs to Sam that maybe he’s actually into this, too. Maybe it isn’t just a play.

So maybe Lucifer’s stuck up there above the rest of humanity, remote from everybody—except Sam.

The thought sends a jolt of heat through him, and Sam doesn’t let himself think about how wrong it is. Lucifer sucks him down deeper, and he’s close, so damn close. He wants to move, to fuck up into all that wet heat, but the restraints are holding him down, and he lets out what’s almost a sob of frustration.

Lucifer pulls off of his cock, petting the curve of his hip. Sam blinks until his face comes back into focus—and the sight doesn’t do anything to help his composure. Lucifer’s lips are red and wet, his eyes dark. Finally, something other than patient composure on his face.

“Sam,” he says, again, voice soft and urgent. “All you have to do is stop denying yourself.” He’s still close enough that his breath whispers against the length of Sam’s cock, and it twitches helplessly in midair. “I know you felt it. You just have to admit it to yourself.”

Sam squeezes his eyes shut helplessly. “Just don’t—” he gets out, and then stops. Some part of him still knows he should fight back.

“It’s okay,” Lucifer tells him. “It’s okay.”

“Don’t stop.” His voice comes out in a whisper, defeated.

But then— _then_ , he’s free.

The restraints are gone, and he can move. He sits up, and Lucifer cups his face in both hands like he’s touching something precious, and says, “You see?”

“Yeah,” Sam breathes, and right then he knows that he means it. (He’ll tell himself he doesn’t, later, that he didn’t know what he was saying, but not now, not now, he’s too far gone now.)

Lucifer smiles at him like he’s just done something wonderful—and then he sinks down and takes Sam’s cock in his mouth again, and a second later Sam is coming harder than he thought was possible, fingers curled in Lucifer’s hair, eyes squeezed shut, stars sparkling behind his eyelids.

All the tension, all the thirst, everything goes out of him, and he flops back onto the cot with a sigh. Just for a moment, before the doubt comes flooding back in, he feels blissful relief.

It’s quiet. “Lucifer?” he says, but there’s no answer.

When Sam opens his eyes, he’s alone.

 

\----

 

As they drive away from Bobby’s at the end of the week, Dean keeps his eyes on the road for the longest time. With thirty minutes of blacktop unspooled behind them, he turns to look at Sam.

“So,” he says. “How you doing?”

Sam shrugs. “Yeah,” he says. “Okay, yeah.” It’s actually mostly true. He isn’t getting the withdrawal stuff like he did with the demon blood, when he went too long without seeing Ruby. Just, sometimes, when he closes his eyes, he imagines he sees stardust.

“Okay,” Dean says, in that tone that betrays he isn’t at all sure it’s okay just yet. “Good.” And, sure enough, a couple minutes later, “You know, when you took down Famine?”

Sam lifts an eyebrow, _No, I’d forgotten_ , on the tip of his tongue, but doesn’t say it.

“Didn’t it look, I dunno, a little different? Than the other times you’ve gone after demons? Like—I dunno, like there was a _light_ , or something?”

Sam shrugs, keeping his eyes front. “I guess because Famine wasn’t a regular demon? Or even a demon at all?”

Dean makes a face, noncommittal, and Sam knows he’s disappointed his brother somehow. Even though there’s no way Dean could know; even though most of what happened was only a dream. 

Dean doesn’t push it, though, so Sam just closes his eyes and lets his head rest against the car window.

He doesn’t sleep. He doesn’t know if that’s a bad thing.

 

\----

 

He powers through a day and a night on the road, and then they catch wind of a vamp nest up in Montana and a couple more days pass with only the scraps of sleep he manages to snatch in the back of the Impala, nothing deep enough that Sam remembers his dreams. Sam isn’t complaining: if they’re too busy to sleep, Dean is too busy to keep nursing his suspicions about what happened with Famine.

Only, he can’t outrun his dreams forever. 

Eventually they chase down the last of the bloodsuckers, and Sam collapses into his motel bed without even bothering to take a shower; just strips off his ruined jeans and crawls under the covers while Dean hogs the bathroom and bitches about vamp juice on the carpet as though he’s the one who’s gonna have to clean it.

Sam half-hopes that he’s tired enough he’ll just fall straight into blankness, but no such luck. He shuts his eyes, and in the space of a heartbeat, he’s back in his motel room in Garber—the one where Lucifer first showed up in his dreams. The wallpaper and the sheets on the bed are blood red. He managed to forget that little detail, sometime in the interim.

“Did you miss me?” 

No masquerade this time, though. Lucifer’s in his own form (or his vessel’s, anyway), sitting cross-legged at the foot of the bed. No mockery, either. The question sounds genuine, and the open, curious way he regards Sam’s face—that looks genuine, too.

Sam sits up, the red sheets pooling around his waist, finding suddenly that he needs to be at eye level instead of on his back with Lucifer looking down at him.

Lucifer smiles and scoots closer to him, almost close enough to touch. “I missed you,” he tells Sam, and fuck if he doesn’t still sound genuine.

“I’m still not telling you where I am.”

All he gets in reply is a nod, and Lucifer reaching out to take his hand, fingertips trailing over the ticklish part of his palm. There’s the thin, silvery line of a scar on his wrist, where he opened a vein for Sam. He could have healed it completely, right?

Half-involuntarily, Sam takes his hand and turns it palm-up, runs the pad of his thumb along the scar. It’s as pale as starlight.

Sam looks up and meets Lucifer’s eyes, questioning, but the only answer he gets is a soft laugh and a headshake. “It won’t work in a dream, if that’s what you’re wondering. Has to be the real stuff.”

Feeling himself flush, Sam looks down. “It’s not—I wasn’t—” 

“Weren’t you?”

It still isn’t a taunt. That’s the worst part.

 

\----

 

Sam doesn’t remember much of the dream after that, but he wakes early even though last night he would’ve sworn he’d be out for twelve hours straight. He can feel his heartbeat in his throat, and he’s got the worst case of morning wood he’s experienced since he was a teenager. A vague sense-memory of lips on his skin lingers for a moment, clinging to him like cobwebs.

In the other bed, Dean is still snoring fit to wake the dead. Sam makes a cursory effort to breathe through it, to will his inconvenient hard-on away and not to think about what might have caused it, but he gives in faster than he’d like to admit.

He picks his way past the empty bottles on the floor by Dean’s bed, double-checks the bolt on the bathroom door, and turns on the shower. He’s quick and methodical taking care of himself, keeping the mental images at bay as best he can, but still, in the split second before he comes, he gets a flash of ice-blue eyes and starlight.

The rush of shame is to be expected. What he doesn’t expect is how much lighter he feels, afterward, his limbs loose and easy, the inside of his head quieter than it has been in months.

 

\----

 

Things go on like that for a while. Sam tries hard not to remember his dreams, but some mornings he wakes up needy and aching. Still no withdrawal pangs from the angel blood, but he remembers how it felt, to be galaxies—and sometimes, when they’re driving along unlit highways after dark and he sees a glimmer of stars up ahead, he gets this sharp ache like a sliver of ice lodged behind his heart.

Dean doesn’t ask him any awkward questions; but then Dean doesn’t say a whole lot to him these days.

The pattern holds for a couple weeks. Sometimes one or the other of them will suggest heading back to Bobby’s, as though this time, if they all hit the books and the whiskey and put their heads together, they’ll figure it out. Only Bobby keeps on throwing jobs their way, grumbling down the phone and telling them that the Apocalypse isn’t a pause button for the rest of the monsters when they question him.

(“You think he’s okay?” Sam asks, after one of those calls. Dean gives him an incredulous look and turns away.)

There’s a haunting in Connecticut, a nest of pixies in Idaho, and then Bobby sends them after something fishy-looking in Michigan. It’s barely an hour’s drive from Detroit, too close for comfort, and Dean looks at Sam sideways and says, “You sure about this one?” after they get off the phone with Bobby. “Bobby could probably put somebody else on it if—”

Sam scowls at him. “I’m sure.”

Dean gives him that opaque look again, but shoulders his duffel and heads for the car.

Things are as awkward as they have been since they left Sioux Falls, and Sam’s almost grateful that the case is a tough one. Three victims missing near a local lake, but there’s none of the telltale black goo that would indicate an afanc, and no sightings of creepy old women to suggest a water wraith. Bobby seems distracted when Sam calls him, promising to hit the books and get back to them and then going hours without getting in touch.

Sam checks out the town library and the local records office, while Dean tries to charm a few details out of the freaked-out witness who says she saw ‘something’ pull the latest dead guy into the lake. When he’s finally alone, he can’t help a small sigh of relief. 

He’s been on edge, keeping himself in check, trying to stay in the moment and make sure he doesn’t slip up and give himself away. Even if he’s not sure _what_ he’d be giving away. It’s like being right back where he was with Ruby and the demon blood. Except that Lucifer isn’t likely to send him any incriminating texts, and anyway, it isn’t like it’s going to happen again.

And then there’s how tired and resigned Dean looks about the whole thing, not pushing Sam to tell him the truth. Like he’s decided Sam is a lost cause. 

Sam massages his temples and pushes the image away; forces himself to look at the old newspapers in front of him, instead.

Concentrating on the details of the case helps. He digs through the newspaper items on disappearances, some of them dating back to the mid-eighties, but there isn’t much in them that sounds supernatural. Then, something else catches his eye.

A little side piece, on the right of the report about a missing teenager. _Local woman’s garden trampled by horse_. Kinda weird. This doesn’t exactly seem like the horsey kind of town. Sam frowns and zeroes in on the report. 

The same night the first victim went missing, some lady who lived near the lake found her garden all churned up, hoofprints in the lawn. The story must have gotten buried under all the panic about the disappearances, because there’s nothing in any of the later issues. Doesn’t look like they ever found out whose horse it was.

Same kind of thing after the next batch of deaths, a few years later. A guy claims to have found a black horse wandering around in his backyard, closes the gate to trap it there, only for it to be gone the next morning. And there are a couple other similar incidents scattered around over the years. A black horse, when people see it, but mostly they don’t.

It sounds vaguely familiar. He read something about it—yeah, in one of Bobby’s lore books. Kelpies. Scottish water spirits that look like horses, and need to feed every few years. 

Bobby doesn’t pick up when he tries calling, so he leaves a voicemail and hangs up, tries Dean’s number instead. There’s no answer.

“Dean?” Sam swallows, trying to push down his worry. “You get this? Stay away from water. I couldn’t get hold of Bobby, but—I’m pretty sure we’re dealing with a kelpie.”

There was a park not too far from the witness’s house, with a swing set and a sandpit, and a lake with ducks on it.

That would make sense. All the stories in Bobby’s book had pointed to one thing: kelpies like kids. They see a horse and wanted to ride on it, and it lets them climb up on its back and then runs into the water to drown them. Their small bones wash up later, picked clean and tangled in the weeds at the edge of the lake. But kelpies will go for adults, too, if they happen to be around. Usually they go running after the kids and get dragged in with them.

If Dean saw a kid in danger, there’s no way he wouldn’t try to jump in, even if he knew how dangerous it was. _Especially_ if he knew how dangerous it was, given how Dean’s been acting lately.

Sam tries his number again. Voicemail.

Nothing from Bobby, either.

And without the books—well, Sam has a pretty good idea what they’re dealing with here, but how to kill it? Not so much.

He closes his eyes, and tries not to think about light and power flowing through his veins. An angel’s power could kill one, surely?

Cas. Crap. He should’ve thought of Cas first.

Sam hesitates for a second before he offers up a prayer, the fear that Cas will maybe read the rest of his thoughts in it fluttering somewhere in the back of his throat. He swallows it and throws out, _Cas? Castiel? Uh, I know you’re busy right now, but we could really use your help._

There’s no answer, no familiar sound of wings. Sam waits, and the evening wears on.

The witness who Dean was talking to—her house was near the park. 

Sam can’t help thinking it. The way those demons had dissipated into nothing at a wave of his hand. The crack of pale lightning through their disembodied forms. How easy it was to destroy them. It would be so easy to destroy this monster, too, if he just had the power.

And Dean is out there, and he might be in trouble.

He forces himself to stop that thought. Dean can take care of himself. 

Like he took care of himself back with Famine, rushing in half-cocked and getting himself caught. Like he’s been taking care of himself since St. Mary’s, worrying over Sam’s every move.

Sam tries to shut down his train of thought. He really does. But the later it gets, the longer he goes without any answer from Dean or Bobby or Cas, the harder it gets to ignore. 

He finds himself on his feet, sometime after midnight, out in the parking lot. His hands are shaking as he rakes his fingers through his hair, pushing it out of his face. It falls back into his eyes right away. He sighs and looks up, but the stars are hidden tonight: all he sees is the dull glow of light pollution reflected back from the clouds.

When Sam finally closes his eyes and clasps his hands and whispers Lucifer’s name, it’s desperation that drives him. Still, he feels like a traitor for the relief it brings.

The rush of displaced air blows his hair back, and when he opens his eyes, Lucifer’s standing in front of him in the empty parking lot. The ruby-red neon of the motel sign lights him up from behind, an ironic halo.

“Something’s wrong.” Lucifer tilts his head, takes a step toward Sam. “What do you need?”

It takes Sam a moment to be able to look him in the eyes. “You said you loved your brother,” he gets out. “Back before—before everything. If he was gonna die. You would have done anything to save him, right?”

Lucifer cups his cheek, soft but inexorable, forcing him to hold eye contact. “You don’t have to justify yourself to me,” he says. “I’m not here to judge you.” A tiny pause. “But yes. Of course I would have, then.”

Sam closes his eyes, then opens them again. “Then you already know why I’m here.”

 

\----

 

It feels different, this time. Easier to keep a handle on himself. Sam should probably worry about that, about the fact he’s building up a tolerance—but he’ll do it later. 

Later, he’ll remember the details. The sound of the stiff motel room door closing behind them; the pale gleam of Lucifer’s angel blade in the dark room; the spot of blood that lands on the hideous blue-and-orange comforter when he cuts his wrist, leaving a tiny stain.

Sam puts his mouth to the cut and drinks—and again it’s vast and strange, again it’s oceans of stars flowing through him, but this time he knows how to swim in it. He finds his own way back down to earth, and when he does, Lucifer is watching him with something reverent and soft in his expression. He’s looking at Sam, but his irises reflect the night sky.

Sam wants to kiss him again, very badly.

He shakes the feeling off. He’ll let it consume him later, when Dean is safe. Now, he’ll do what he has to.

“Take me to the lake,” he says.

Lucifer nods and presses his fingertips to Sam’s forehead. The flight is short and leaves him breathless, but he feels like he got a brief flash of the life of the universe on the trip. He’s never been so aware, the times Cas has zapped them places, and maybe it’s something to do with the blood and the light and those other senses, the ones he feels like he might have if he could just get beyond the confines of his human body.

“What was—?” he starts to say, but Lucifer is gone, and he’s standing at the edge of the lake in darkness, no sound but the lapping of the water.

 

\----

 

Dean is unconscious but breathing, hidden among the undergrowth by the lake. The ropes tying his wrists and ankles are slippery like pondweed, and Sam struggles to unpick the knots, his fingers fumbling in the wet. He’s still trying to get them off when a soft splash breaks the stillness.

Something surfaces at the lake’s edge. For a moment, in the dark, it looks like a woman draped in a long wet veil. Then she shifts, changes, and the sleek shape of a black horse rises out of the water. The only points of light are its eyes, sea-green fire in the darkness.

It picks its way toward Sam almost delicately, ears twitching back and forth. When it’s level with him, it dips its head, offering its nose as though it wants to be petted. That’s how they get people, Sam remembers. You touch them once and you can’t let go.

Sam breathes in deeply, and feels the burn of starlight in his lungs, his nerves, his blood. Then he reaches out and places his palm on the kelpie’s nose.

It feels as soft as velvet. For the space of a heartbeat, nothing happens.

The kelpie seems to sense something, then, because it shies back, nostrils flaring, like it’s trying to shake him off.

Sam doesn’t let go, and the light flows through him. It rushes outward in a flash of actinic white that makes him close his eyes, and when he opens them again, there’s only ash and dust in front of him.

It’s a moment before Dean starts to stir—long enough for Sam to be grateful he didn’t see that; to gather himself back from the brink and the bright rush.

“Dude.” Dean’s voice is hoarse, and he coughs a couple times as he sits up. “What happened?”

Sam rushes back to his side, kneels in the mud and gets back to untying his bonds. “What’s the last thing you remember?”

Dean frowns. “I was talking to—whatshername. Sophia.” The witness. “Didn’t sound like she saw much, but she was still pretty shaken up after I got done with the questions, so I said, hey. Let’s take a walk around the park, get you some fresh air.” He coughs again, and scowls. “Seemed to cheer her up. So, we’re halfway around the lake and she says, hey, give me a minute, and she disappears into the bushes. I thought she needed to take a piss. Only she’s gone for way longer than that, and the next thing I know there’s a freaking _horse_ on the path.”

Sam nods. “That makes sense. She was a kelpie.”

Dean squints up at him. “What?”

“Scottish water-sprite. They like to drag people underwater then eat them.” Sam pauses. “Don’t worry, I took care of it. And, pretty sure they’re solitary, so we don’t have to worry about the rest of the herd coming after us.”

If Dean was a little less out of it, he’d probably start demanding details right about now. He must still be feeling pretty dazed, though, because he just mumbles, “Awesome,” and lets his eyes fall shut again.

Sam decides against trying to wake him. He gets Dean settled on the grass near the park gates and goes to find the Impala, still parked in front of Sophia’s house. It’s actually pretty helpful having a task to concentrate on, having to haul Dean into the backseat and then back into the motel room. Helps Sam stop thinking about the bright burn of power still in his system, the stars that flash when he blinks, the way that it shines in his bones.

Only, once he’s gotten them back to the motel, checked Dean over—only to be pushed away with a grumble of “‘M fine”—and crawled into his own bed, Sam doesn’t have anything to distract him anymore. And no matter how still he tries to make himself, how hard he tries to concentrate on other things, he can still feel it.

He closes his eyes, and he’s still in his body, but at the same time he’s more than it, he’s floating into the sky until the small lights of the town fade away below him and the stars look close enough to touch. But he isn’t alone. There’s another presence up there with him, so close that he feels a prickle like static electricity all around his edges, the charge of a connection. So familiar he doesn’t need to put a name to it…

Sam’s heart is racing when he opens his eyes. He sits up in bed, shoving the covers off of him, and glances across the room. Dean is an unconscious lump on the other bed. 

He sighs and gets to his feet, shoves on his boots and lets himself out into the parking lot. The red neon of the sign scrolls up and down, and when he closes his eyes he can still see it, a bright pulse inside of his skull.

“You found your brother.”

Sam blinks his eyes open. Lucifer’s standing in front of him again—a little too close for comfort, but not making any moves toward him—and suddenly it all feels that little bit stronger. The things he felt earlier come flooding back. The urge to close the gap, to reach out and touch—

He forces himself to stay where he’s standing. “Yeah,” he says. “Uh, thanks.”

“You’re welcome.” Lucifer gives him a slight smile, and then Sam starts when their fingers brush together. It’s just a brief touch, but the connection is like closing a circuit, and the shock of sensation makes him gasp.

Lucifer squeezes his hand. And then they aren’t in the parking lot any more.

It’s a motel room just like the one he’s sharing with Dean—but there aren’t any books or weapons strewn around the place, and his panicked glance at the bed nearest the door shows that it’s empty.

“Don’t worry,” Lucifer tells him. “This room’s free.”

Sam nods dumbly and doesn’t ask how he knows that. They’re still holding hands.

He lets Lucifer tug him over to the other bed, sits down beside him. This time, he isn’t honestly sure which of them initiates the kiss—but it’s real this time, it’s _real_ , and every touch is a new spark of bright power running through him. He sinks back onto the mattress, and Lucifer leans down to kiss him, and he lets it happen, closing his eyes, drifting away on the tide of it all.

“Sam.” It’s soft, not a demand, but he finds himself obeying anyway. “Look at me.”

He opens his eyes and finds Lucifer looking down at him with that same calm satisfaction, like Sam is a favourite student who’s just passed a test.

That thought stirs something uncomfortable inside of him. Not enough to make him stop, but enough that Sam knows he has to pull it back a little here. Has to hold onto _some_ semblance of control.

Sam takes a breath—and then he wraps his arms around Lucifer’s waist and flips them over. For maybe half a second, Lucifer’s eyes go wide with surprise, and Sam feels his heart do a nervous skip. Then Lucifer smiles up at him, and Sam isn’t sure if he’s just won or lost something here.

He shuts away the thought and distracts himself with another kiss, with tracing his thumb down Lucifer’s cheek. It catches the edge of one of those burn marks, and Sam pulls his hand back as though he’s the one who’s been burned. Lucifer doesn’t flinch, though. Just keeps watching Sam’s face, his gaze steady and open, and somehow Sam feels like he’s being accused of something. 

He ducks his head. “Don’t,” he says. “Don’t—I can’t. I can’t.”

Lucifer’s touch is light, careful. “You can,” he says. “And you will. But I can wait.” He sighs. “This isn’t a trick, Sam. It’s just—” He stops. “I don’t need to tell you what it is. You can feel it, right?”

Sam doesn’t know if he can answer that. Not out loud, anyway. To keep himself from saying something he’ll regret, he leans down and kisses Lucifer again, and Lucifer goes with it, parting his lips and kissing back and letting it happen. 

He lets Sam undress them both, lets himself be pressed down into the mattress, their bodies sliding together in the dark. 

(— _and at the same time, he takes Sam’s hand, rises with him out of their bodies and into the night sky_ —)

Every touch is another connection in the circuit, and Sam finds himself humming with need, achingly hard, every muscle trembling like he’s on the brink of something.

(— _the link between them is so easy, so effortless, like it was always there—the circles of a Venn diagram sliding together until Sam hardly knows where he ends and Lucifer begins_ —)

“It’s okay,” Lucifer keeps telling him, “It’s okay.” He soothes Sam’s shaking with cool hands. He whispers encouragement against Sam’s ear, mouths softly along the curve of his neck. He opens himself up, lets Sam slide inside of him and fuck him so hard the motel bed rattles against the wall, and afterward he just keeps stroking Sam’s hair out of his face and telling him that everything’s going to be fine.

God help him, but Sam wants to believe him.

 

\----

 

In the morning, there’s a message from Bobby on Sam’s voicemail. He waits until Dean is in the shower to listen to it, sitting on his bed back in their shared room. (Luckily, Dean was still out cold when he snuck back in.) Sam feels fine—good, actually, light and alert, like he could take off if he just put his mind to it—but now that Dean is feeling better, he’s started up with the suspicious looks again.

The voicemail is instructions for a spell. Getting rid of a kelpie the usual way requires a few ingredients you can find at any magic shop worth its salt—plus water from the kelpie’s own ancestral loch. Yeah, that’s not gonna be easy to explain away.

Sam deletes the message. If Bobby mentions it in front of Dean, he figures he’ll have to claim that Cas took a break from the God-hunt to help them out, but had to leave before Dean came around. Or maybe in the meantime he’ll come up with something better.

He sighs and puts his phone away. 

This can’t last, and really, Sam knows it. He just doesn’t have the faintest idea what he’s gonna do when it all comes crumbling down around his ears.

 

\----

 

As things turn out, Bobby isn’t much interested in grilling him about how the kelpie hunt went, the next time they swing by Sioux Falls. The town has its own mini zombie apocalypse going on, and Death is behind it, which means Lucifer is behind it.

Sam feels sick.

But the night after they burn Karen’s body, he dreams again.

Back in the motel room with the red wallpaper, Lucifer is waiting for him. Sam scowls in the face of his patient expression, and Lucifer just spreads his hands.

“I know what you’ve seen was unpleasant,” he says. “I’m sorry it had to be that way.”

“ _Had_ to?” Sam presses the back of his hand over his mouth. “Bobby, Sheriff Mills, all those people, they had to watch their loved ones turn into monsters. They had to—”

“They lived in a false paradise for a little while, and then they saw that it was a lie.” Lucifer sounds like he’s explaining something to a class of preschoolers, and Sam sits up in the bed and turns away from him. 

“Yeah, well, they wouldn’t have had to deal with it at all if you hadn’t sent Death to do your dirty work.”

“Wouldn’t they?” Lucifer’s hand finds his shoulder and squeezes it—as though he’s actually trying to reassure Sam here. “The people on this planet—they’ve been living in false hope since the day they were born. They believe that my father is still up there, that He’s merciful, that He still cares about their insignificant little lives and He’ll reward them if they’re good. That’s the cruellest joke of all. I haven’t done anything to them that my father didn’t.”

Sam shrugs his hand off. “Except that you’re planning to kill them all.”

Lucifer shrugs. “They’ll be at peace. After what you saw today, can you really tell me that would be worse?”

“I can’t talk to you.” Sam grits his teeth. “Just go. Please.”

Lucifer does as he’s asked. Before he vanishes, he tucks a strand of Sam’s hair behind his ear. His touch tingles coolly, leaving behind a trail of starlight.

 

\----

 

The dreams keep coming. Every time, Sam argues. And every time, he wakes up feeling sick and uncertain.

Some nights, when it’s late and Dean is out drinking, or going through the motions of hitting on some bartender, he prays. He doesn’t give out his location, and Lucifer never shows, but Sam feels like he’s being listened to.

( _“Think about it,” Lucifer tells him, in one dream. “All the humans in their Heavens. No more suffering, except for those who deserve it. Wouldn’t that be better?”_ )

Some mornings, Sam wakes up seeing stars.

One of those mornings, it’s the sound of a gunshot that wakes him. There’s a split-second of consciousness and bright red pain, and then he’s in Heaven.

Zachariah hunts them through its strange dreamscape, and he doesn’t let up once they’ve gotten back to Earth. They don’t have time to stop, to breathe, to do anything but look over their shoulders.

Dean is mostly not speaking to him, and Cas is pretty much AWOL, and despite everything, the dreams turn into kind of a relief. There’s no distrust or despair when Lucifer looks at him, and sometimes, still, Sam can’t help but sink into his touch.

 

\----

 

It happens when Sam is out on a food run.

His phone rings in his pocket and he fumbles for it, dropping his container of salad and getting a look that could kill cockroaches from the old lady at the other end of the aisle.

Dean. He hits the answer button and puts the phone to his ear. “What’s up?”

“Sam?” There’s panic in Dean’s voice. “Sammy, we gotta get out of here. Crap, I don’t know how they found us, but—”

There’s a crack, then: the noise of Dean’s phone hitting the floor. Everything else is muffled.

— _those handy sigils Castiel gave you_ — Zachariah’s voice, insufferably smug even at the remove of a phone call. – _but we do know how to track down another angel’s power. Something your brother hasn’t been telling you_ —

Sam’s heart sinks as the pieces fall into place. It’s his fault. The power he got from Lucifer’s blood—that’s what Zachariah and his goons have been tracking. That’s how they got to Dean.

Which means they must be on his ass, too.

The door of the convenience store opens. A man and a woman stalk through it, shouldering their way past the old lady, who gives them another of her glares. They’re both in suits and crisp white shirts, and Sam doesn’t need to see the blades in their hands to peg them for angels.

On the phone, Zachariah is still talking. 

— _thing is, we found your brother Adam. So, Dean, if you keep on saying no, you won’t stop anything. And with what Sam’s been doing_ —

Sam hesitates a moment. But the light inside of him thrums, and he knows what he has to do.

He’s screwed up. He’s screwed up so bad. But Dean—Dean is good. Dean has Bobby and Cas to keep him from doing something crazy, and Dean doesn’t have the any demon taint in his blood or any connection to the Devil tugging at his mind. Sam can’t fix this, but maybe Dean can. Hell, maybe Dean will have a better chance of fixing it without having to worry about Sam’s sorry ass the whole time. 

And if Sam can save Dean—then, well, maybe Sam will almost be the guy who saved the world.

The store door closes. The angels advance toward him.

Sam raises his eyes and prays.

 

\----

 

Bright with power, he touches the motel room door and feels it splinter beneath his hand, easy as waving away a cobweb.

The angels in the room are creatures of light beneath the skins of their vessels. It hurts Sam’s eyes and takes his breath away both at once. He’s seeing some vestige of their true forms, translated onto the mortal plane, and it’s beautiful and terrible and Sam _knows_ it, knows that light because it’s a part of him now.

Zachariah looks back at him, and his smug mask slips, jaw going slack as he takes in—well, whatever Sam looks like now.

Sam has already used Lucifer’s blade to cut into his palm, and he feels the blood warm and sticky in his hand. He closes his fist, brings it in near to his body. 

Zachariah turns to glare at his subordinates. “Don’t just stand there!” His voice is panicked. Somehow, Sam always knew he’d go to pieces the moment he lost control. “Do something!”

Two of them rush him at once. Sam waves his hand and, with a pulse of light, sends them flying into opposite walls. Another gesture throws Zachariah through the bathroom door, and he sprawls in the bottom of the shower amid the shards of wood and the fallen bottles of toiletries. The curtain rail comes loose with the impact, and a second later it falls and hits him over the head. 

There’s something satisfying about seeing that smug asshole so undignified. No time to dwell on it, though. Sam turns to the motel room door and draws his banishing sigil with quick, practised movements, sending one of the hench-angels flying with another wave as soon as it scrambles to its feet and comes at him again.

It’s intoxicating, the rush of light and power each time he does that. It would be easy to get caught up in it, never to stop fighting. Somehow, like this, it’s easier to understand why Michael and Lucifer won’t give up on their war.

Sam finishes his sigil in a hurry. By the time Zachariah regains his feet, he’s ready—and when he presses his palm to the wall, there’s a blinding flash of light and the angels are gone.

There’s nobody left but Dean, standing in the middle of the trashed motel room, looking at Sam with horror in his eyes.

“Dean.” His voice is hoarse. “Dean, I—”

“Don’t.” Dean won’t meet his eyes, won’t even look up at him, and there’s a pain somewhere deep beneath Sam’s ribcage and he wants to say, _No_ , but it won’t come out.

Then there’s a sound of wings, and a gentle hand between his shoulder blades.

“Come with me?” Lucifer asks him.

Sam looks helplessly at Dean. Whatever fear his brother might be feeling, it’s buried under his resignation, deep enough that Sam can’t see it, and Dean just lets out a hopeless, shuddery sigh.

“Tell me to stay.” Sam’s words startle him. His voice cracks a little, hoarse and helpless.

Dean says nothing. 

Sam closes his eyes, and turns to Lucifer, and nods.

 

\----

 

He grits his teeth and tries not to cry that night. He doesn’t know where the motel room Lucifer takes them to is, and he doesn’t try to look out the window to find out. He lies on his side with his eyes closed, and doesn’t open them when the mattress dips as Lucifer lies beside him.

Lucifer doesn’t say much, and Sam is grateful for that. He couldn’t take a lecture tonight. There’s just the sound of an angel blade being unsheathed, and then Lucifer gently pulls him into a sitting position.

“Here,” he says, and holds out his arm, the cut in his wrist opened up along the old scar. In the dark room, his blood shines like rubies. “You’ll feel better.”

Sam should fight it. He knows he should. But the knowing is a distant echo in the back of his mind, and he’s so tired. He just wants to drift away, into the stars. Just for tonight.

“In the morning,” Lucifer tells him, “I’m going to ask you a question.”

Sam blinks at him. The expected jolt of adrenaline, the terror, doesn’t make itself felt, and Sam realizes he was expecting this.

He realizes, too, that he doesn’t know what his answer will be.

“You don’t have to worry about it now.” Lucifer offers his wrist again. “Drink. And then get some rest.”

Sam closes his eyes in despair. Then he opens them again. He reaches out and takes Lucifer’s hand, and drinks. 

That night, the light of his dreams is blinding.

**Author's Note:**

> Talk to me? [DW](http://anactoria.dreamwidth.org) | [Tumblr](http://anactorya.tumblr.com)


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